Cranky Old Man Winter obviously resented Spring's tentative appearance last week when we had moderate-to-mild temperatures and wide open blue skies enabling the growing heat of the spring sun to commence with the melting of the winter snowpack on the street and in the forest. He pulled rank the last few days, marching obdurately back with unwelcome gifts of cold emitted from his hoary breath, whipping icy winds at us, reminding us that he had no intention of leaving gracefully.

So even though the temperature was notably below freezing the last few days, the wind made it seem that much colder. At -4C, though itself tolerable, a 30mph wind makes a considerable impact. Both conspired after last week's mild 12 degrees and full-day rain, to gift us with a thick layer of glare ice on the forest trails, shutting us out for days. With hospitals full of seasonal flu patients and gearing themselves up for a rush of coronavirus patients it isn't too bright to challenge fate with broken limbs from a nasty fall on steep, iced trails.

The alternate option for us the past several days has been taking Jackie and Jillie for walks on our neighbourhood streets, an alternative that none of us really are wild about. Snow began falling early this morning and by four in the afternoon it was still coming down, though by then mixed with freezing rain. In a few hours' hence there'll be less snow and more freezing rain, the wind will pick up and it will be colder than the present -1C. By no means pleasant.

After breakfast, my husband went downstairs to his workshop to continue putting together a stained glass window he's been working on for a while, a companion to one already up over the window of one of the bedrooms overlooking the front of the house. It's a design he put together somewhat emulating our front garden, with the image of the Great Daibutsu in a bed of hostas. The companion window will represent another part of the garden when it's completed and installed.

Today is house-cleaning day, so while I did the bathrooms, the furniture dusting, the dry-mopping of the hardwood floors and washed the floors in the bathrooms, laundry room, kitchen and breakfast room, my husband did the vacuuming, relieving me of that part of the cleaning ritual. Jackie and Jillie know all the signals; when the doors are re-opened keeping them from walking on wet floors, they go a little berserk with exultation at being 'freed' from the confines of the family room.

Then they whip tumultuously around the  house in a mad frenzy of sudden activation, sending scatter rugs everywhere, leaping from our bed upstairs to the love seat opposite where my husband is seated, while I clean myself up and change. Normally what would follow directly would be an outing in the ravine, enjoying a good long tramp on the forest trails. But conditions make it impossible until milder weather returns to soften the ice on the trails.

Jackie and Jillie don't seem to mind staying at home a day, forgoing our usual ramble in the woods. When conditions make it feasible, without risking life and limb, they'll accept that too, that we've seen fit to return to what we've long been familiar with, enjoying the ambiance of the woods, striding with comfortable ease along the trails and re-connecting with nature.